Long Gone
by daphno
Summary: A few drabbles centering on Sherry in the days and weeks following Raccoon City. Quite dark!
1. Interrogation

"Now Sherry," says Officer Martin, pointing his pen at her and smiling as though they are best friends. She's already shouted at him once, and knows it won't do any good to try again. So she nods at him and leans back on the sofa, crossing her hands over her stomach. Beside her, Mr Reynolds touches her knee lightly.

"Sherry, we want you to answer these questions as truthfully as you can," he says, "but if you get upset, try not to worry." She nods at him; she can recognise a social worker's beat when she hears it.

Officer Martin smiles, and returns to reading from his clipboard. "Your parents – Doctor and Mrs Birkin – they were scientists, right?"

"Right," answers Sherry, glad to be asked an easy question for once.

Martine continues, "right, and did they ever… hurt you? Were they angry, a lot?"

Sherry wonders how on earth she could answer such a question. She's sitting on a sofa in a hospital miles from anywhere she recognises, covered head to toe in blood and grime, still getting flashes from the past few days. She wants to tell him to get out of here, stop wasting his time with her and get out there to where the real monsters are.

She nods, slowly. Her parents were fucked-up physicists with more lab equipment than sense, a blood-alcohol level higher than she had learned to count at school and they'd left her cold and hungry on more than one occasion. So yeah, I guess you could say they'd hurt her.

Officer Martin nods, makes a note on his clipboard and stares at her. He's young, probably not even thirty, and has dark skin and darker eyes. He's probably wondering how he got stuck with this detail, how the hell on earth he got assigned to the hospital's first, and likely only, survivor of a bio-terrorism incident. Sherry couldn't blame him.

"Did they ever… touch you?" He says this slowly, as though he's making sure she really understands.

She understands all right. But she shakes her head, twice. They never paid her the slightest bit of attention, and she supposes she ought to be grateful for that.

"Tell us about their relationship with Mr Wesker, is that his name?"

Sherry nods again. "Mr Wesker was their friend. He came over for dinner sometimes, and he worked with them. Well, more with my father than my mom. They were partners."

Officer Martin's eyes light up and he scribbles more on his clipboard. Sherry wonders what she's said to make him write like that.

"Mr Martin," she says quietly. Mr Reynolds beside her smiles encouragingly. "Mr Martin, what's the point of asking me these questions? My parents are dead, and so is Mr Wesker." She says that last part hesitantly, because she sure as hell hopes he is. No, she takes a breath, she shouldn't be wishing that sort of thing. But then she remembers the blood in the street and the demons in the office, and she isn't sure what she should be thinking. She doesn't feel twelve years old anymore.

Officer Martin sits back in his chair. "Sherry, surely you can't be glad that your parents are dead?"

She feels sick just hearing him say it. Dead, dead, they're both dead, Christmas, birthdays, July 4th, school plays, science fairs – all of it is dead and undead and killed again at gunpoint by her knight in shining armor. She can barely recall how it happened, how she managed to survive. Even now, she's struggling to remember what Claire looks like.

Sherry shrugs. She's doing a lot of that lately.


	2. Homecoming

Sherry gets placed with a nice family in Illinois, a church-going couple who have a large property on some deserted farmland in the middle of nowhere. The hospital staff wake her up one morning with sickly grins, saying "you can go home today honey, a new home".

She kicks the comforter off the bed and sits up. The nurse smiles at her, hands her a carton of orange juice. Sherry gulps it down, feeling it burn into her stomach. She hasn't drank from a juice box since she was five years old, but they treat her like a kid here, babying her and patting her head. She misses Claire, more than she misses her mom.

The nurse hands her some clothes, and Sherry is glad to see that she's allowed to wear something that isn't a paper-thin hospital gown. It's a pair of blue jeans and a plain pink v-neck, probably off the bargain rail at Target, but she feels better wearing them. More like herself, whoever she is.

The nurse hands her a plate of toast, and tells her to hurry up, her new family will be here soon. Sherry nods, unable to hide her grin. It's not that she's excited to be superglued on to some new family, she's just relieved to be leaving the hospital. Ever since she and Leon were taken in to government custody three weeks ago, her life has been full of rituals and examinations and questions and drugs. She briefly thinks that doctors push more drugs on her than her parents ever did, then quickly remembers that she's not supposed to joke about that, not now.

She dresses quickly, and finds that though the clothes are designed for a twelve year old girl, they are much too big for her. She slips into her battered old school shoes, and shuffles up to the help desk on her ward.

"S'up girlie?" Wanda who works behind the desk is friendly and upbeat, and has always taken a shine to Sherry.

Sherry grins at her, doing her best to play the sweet little girl. She knows which buttons to press. "Do you know what happened to the red motorbike jacket I was wearing when I came in?"

Wanda crosses her eyes in thought, which has always made Sherry giggle. "You know what kid, I think it was taken as evidence. The police officer took it from you, right?"

"Yes ma'am." She remembered the man's large moonish face, the cool glow to his eyes. He'd frightened her. He'd taken the jacket in order to trace Claire, no matter how many times Sherry had sworn he'd never find her. Sherry smiles at Wanda, remembering her manners, and shuffles away.

Claire gave her that jacket, for good luck. Some good luck she's had so far, Sherry thinks as she jumps up on the bed. She lies back on the pillow, thinking that her time alone won't last long and she might as well make the most of it. She stares at the white ceiling, white walls, horrible white floors. It reminds her of her parents' lab, and Mr Wesker's oily hair.

She hears footsteps, and looks up into the eyes of a smartly dressed social worker.

"Hello Mr Reynolds," she says politely. He grins at her as though today is the greatest day ever.

"Sherry, I have your foster parents with me." He gestures to the end of the ward, and a nervous couple walk in. Sherry assesses them. They are middle-aged, primly dressed, quiet, but otherwise perfectly nice people. She tries to stare them down, but feels guilty when they smile at her.

"Hi Sherry," says the man. She waves at him.

The woman lets go of her husband's hand and comes to stroke Sherry's arm gently. "Hello there, sweetheart, you're going to stay with us for a while, is that okay?"

Sherry nods, feeling sick. She can't work out why such a nice couple would pay her the slightest bit of attention. She wonders how much the nurses have told them. She wonders if they know what happened. She wants to tell them to run, run far away, because there are monsters in the world, and she's one of them.


	3. Nausea

**Nausea**

Sherry is standing in front of the bathroom mirror. It has just turned midnight and she's just turned thirteen. She's staring at her reflection, intimidating herself, looking into the curves of her eyes and the dimples in her cheeks, wondering what is different about being thirteen.

She feels sick, so sick she has a glass of ice water from the fridge clutched in one hand. She has been at Mr and Mrs Walker's house for two weeks now, and feels no more at home. There are four other children here besides her, all of them younger, all of them so much easier to deal with than screwed up Sherry Birkin with her habitual nightmares and her bravado sexual haunting. At least, that was what Mr Reynolds wrote in his letter to Leon last week.

Leon's reply had been a quick scribble and a Hallmark birthday card, which now hung from Sherry's wall. "To Sherry, from Leon", no kisses. She tried calling Claire, but the hasty phone number that she'd given to Sherry before they were separated wouldn't connect. Invalid caller ID. Please try again.

Sherry tries to concentrate on the here and now, on not throwing up. She presses her forehead to the cool mirror, feels her angry headache slowly edge away. She remembers a week ago, Mrs Walker stroking her hair back, pressing clammy hands to her forehead, and her voice low and comforting in her ear.

"When you get a bad headache like this, take something for it," she had said, in her mom-voice. She was a kind woman, too kind to Sherry. She baked a pie every Saturday with the younger kids, and would always let Sherry pick her slice first.

Sherry opens the medicine cabinet, sorts through shaving cream and teething gel until her hands settle on a bottle of paracetamol. The label reads 'Umbrella Corp.' and she feels even sicker as she pulls it off the shelf. She'll never be rid of them. It's been years since she learned her way around 'child proof' medicine lids, and she has the pills in her hands in a matter of seconds. The Birkin family are brought up on drugs, everyone in Raccoon City knows that.

She feels dizzy as she has to remind herself that Raccoon City isn't there anymore, everyone she's ever known is dead. Or undead, but she can't think about that, not anymore. She can't think about her science teacher or her pet rabbit or the boy in 6th grade that she had a crush on and was thinking about asking to the summer dance. Or her best friends, her grandparents, Chief Irons, or the old man who lives in a cabin out in the Arklay Mountains.

Another wave of sickness pulses in her stomach. How easy it would be, to swallow them all. How quick, like going to sleep.

She tips them back into the bottle, leaving only two white tablets in the palm of her hand. She swallows them without any water; her mom always called her a champion when it came to taking medicine.

"That's my girl," she used to say, and blow kisses on her cheek.

Sherry still feels sick, dizzy, as she presses her forehead back against the glass, staring into her reflection. Thirteen years old. She feels like a little girl again, getting out of bed at midnight to cry for her mother.

But her mother is dead, long gone.


End file.
